Cambodian Memorial Sites

Before I started my Cambodian trip with ICOMOS in 2022, I had one full free day to explore the capital city of this country, and the infamous Killing Field with Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum was one of many attractions I saw in that long day tour. While I was deeply depressed to learn all those sad stories of victims by the atrocities of Khmer Rouge, I was happy to note that with international pressure to Cambodian Government this genocide incident was already inscribed by UNESCO under Memory of the World Program. However, when I learnt that Cambodia Government is pushing to inscribe these memorial sites as a World Heritage Site, I question this move because I am afraid that it will become part of political propaganda.

“The genocide will happen again if there is no peace” was the message I heard every time I went to Cambodia and such message was coincided with “Thanks Peace” a slogan by Hun Sen, the former Prime Minister of Cambodia who himself was a Khmer Rouge. I feel that he uses genocide to fear the people to stay in power and divert their attention from the domestic problem by threaten that without him or his son, Cambodia will be in chaos again. I was not surprised to learn that few Khmer Rouge leaders were brought to justice, since most of them become part of Hun Sen’s political allies. According to my guide, there is only two sentences on genocide …

Visited February 2024

It seems that it is going to be the next Cambodian nomination for WH status… It is already seen in Phnom Penh’s Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum where a poster with WH logo welcomes you and lots of other tourists and pilgrims – most Cambodian citizens treat the visit to the site as a kind of pilgrimage to the so important place for their recent history. And I understand them and feel for them the same way I understand other national genocide sites, prisons and camps, but this kind of nominations and inscription don’t make me believe in the outstanding universal values that UNESCO list should promote. We have already the sites “to remember and never happen again” that are inscribed on the list.

It's not often that a major city, especially a national capital, has genocide memorials as its most famous and important tourist attraction, but for all Phnom Penh has to offer, this is exactly the case. I flew into Phnom Penh to start my tour of Cambodia in January 2023, and Choeung Ek and Tuol Sleng were definitely the top priorities of my first day there. The Cambodian capital is unfortunately deficient in public transport, so I had the hotel call us a taxi which took us around the city for the whole day. This was quite fortunate as our driver was very knowledgeable about the different sites in the city, and he informed us that the two main genocide memorials had long lunch breaks; if you want to see them consecutively, make sure to leave early in the morning, or otherwise, you would have to fill up the 3-4 hours around noon with other things as we did (we checked out Wat Phnom, Wat Ounalom, and the Royal Palace, and even had lunch in between the two sites). Els already covers Tuol Sleng well in her review, so I'll mostly focus on Choeung Ek, the Killing Fields and the very first site I visited in the wonderful nation of the Khmer.

Choeung Ek is the farthest major Phnom Penh site from the city center; with the morning rush hour traffic, it took nearly an hour to get there from downtown. Despite the sprawling image conjured up by its name, …

A few weeks ago, Cambodia has added 3 of its genocide memorials to the Tentative List as a serial proposal. The sites commemorate the victims of the Khmer Rouge regime, which was overthrown in 1979. The proposal still has the cumbersome working title “Former M-13 prison/ Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (former S-21)/ Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre (former Execution Site of S-21)”.

I visited the former S-21 prison, now known as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, in 2007. It is located in street 113 in the heart of Phnom Penh. In 2007 it saw some 50 visitors a day, but probably this has risen over the years due to the increase in global tourism - it is one of the few obvious “things to do” in the Cambodian capital. It is also a well-known place on the Dark Tourism circuit. Unfortunately I lost most of the photos of my visit, but I do still have my diary notes and the leaflet that was handed out upon entering the site.

The prison was located in an old school building. Between 1975 and 1978, some 12,000 prisoners were detained and tortured here. When further questioning was of no use, the prisoner was taken to the out-of-town Killing Fields (such as Choeung Ek, the third location of this serial tentative site). There he or she ended up in a mass grave.

The museum still resembles a school building, with classrooms, long corridors and a playground. The classrooms were divided into cells …